ETOA newsletter

ETOA News, Spring 2022

Springtime in Europe and visitors are back

Has confidence returned to the European inbound industry after two years of loss? The Easter holidays saw a welcome return to cheerful holiday bustle as traveller flows picked up.

We know two things. First, agents and operators report strong demand, scarcely affected by geopolitical tension. Second, much of the supply chain, from airlines to hospitality, remains under acute financial and operational stress. While so much has been lost, there is opportunity.

Recovery cannot happen without risk; uncertainty remains. Meanwhile, ETOA’s buyers are looking for new partners across Europe. How the market responds will be the story of our summer.

Product diversification in destinations

During the first quarter of the year our collaboration with City Destinations Alliance has brought valuable insights to a wider audience of European destinations and consolidated our work around product diversification and sustainable development. Our recent webinars highlight this.

Catering for destinations and in-destination suppliers, City Fair is the mid-season opportunity to meet international travel buyers and decision-makers and a great event we are delighted to offer in partnership with City Destinations Alliance. Over 120 buyers and over 100 suppliers have already registered.

Remember, if you are an ETOA supplier member you have access to the money saving package City Fair + GEM, saving €640/£558. Make the most of the online format to meet the greatest variety of international buyers and decision-makers; re-connect with your peers, and build new contacts at GEM.

New Partnership for the Balkans

ETOA’s new partnership with New Deal Europe gives ETOA membership additional coverage and support across the Balkans and Greece. The partnership has already generated close to 20 new ETOA members. Robert Dee, ex-Chair of ETOA Associates, leads new Deal Europe in partnership with Tine Murn. For more information about New Deal Europe and our partnership in the Balkans please click here.

Origin Markets - Focus on Australia & New Zealand

As Europe finally welcomes back travellers from Australia and New Zealand, tour operators and travel experts shared positive feedback in our recent webinar. Demand is tangible however, a lot has to be done to rebuild customers’ confidence and inspire them to travel to Europe.

Australians and New Zealanders are relying more on travel experts to organise their trips and group tours are gaining in popularity. 2022 demand is growing especially for the second half of the year and is expected to be back for Christmas markets.

Interesting trends from these markets include longer trips, higher expenditure, older demographic recovering quicker than the younger travellers and 18s-35s showing a great resilience and willingness travel.

Online Webinars

Since January 2022 we ran 12 webinars with over 2500 attendees and great insights from our speakers to help our community to make informed decisions. Some of the webinars we hosted:

View all webinar recordings on our Insight Hub.

See the event calendar below for dates and links to register for upcoming webinars.

ETOA Community

ETOA is proud to be home to over 1,100 members who trust us to help them do better tourism business in Europe. Since the start of 2022 we have welcomed more than 40 new members with many more expected to join in the weeks and months ahead. There has been strong growth in our supplier membership in response to our rapid growth in international buyer members from long-haul source markets in 2021.

We are confident these new supplier members will see real commercial benefit from their membership of ETOA and wish them well as they use their membership to build stronger relationships with our extensive buyer network.

Our newest members

Members Anniversary

This year we celebrate group tour operator Expat Explore Travel‘s 10 year anniversary as ETOA members. For this occasion we had the pleasure to interview the Directors & Co-Founders of the company, Carl Cronje & Jakes Maritz.
Read the full interview here.

Spotlight Interview Series

Learn more about our members, gain insights into product development and new offering with our spotlight interviews. Our latest interviews are with Italy based Food Valley Travel & Leisure and GPN – Global Passenger Network. They are now all available on the ‘Spotlight Interview Series‘ page.

ETOA Socials are back!

ETOA Socials are back, starting with networking drinks in Paris, Thursday 28th April from 18:30 CEST at the charming restaurant Les Noces de Jeanette.

More social events will be confirmed in the coming weeks in Spain and Italy so watch this space. If you would like to get involved in setting up an ETOA social in your destination, please contact us.

Tour guide ID cards

Do you know what are the benefits of the ETOA Tour Guide ID card?

Proof of status: distinguish yourself from individuals who offer services directly to clients in destination
Recognition as a travel professional: various museums and attractions are pleased to offer a tour guide free entrance and the card helps identifying them.

Partners activities

TravelTech Show is back. Join your industry peers at ExCeL London on the 29-30 June. Across two days there are plenty of opportunities to start conversations with over 100 leading brands that are transforming the travel industry, stay ahead of the curve with the forward-looking conference programme and reconnect with senior travel technology decision-makers. Find out more

SUSTOUR

Funded support for transition to sustainable tourism: deadline 10th May. Applications from EU-based micro enterprises and SMEs are still welcome for the SUSTOUR project, funded by the European COSME programme. Successful applicants will receive support to develop skills, management and capacity related to sustainability, improving performance and developing market opportunity.

For more information including application materials, please click here.